WikiLeaks dropped by DNS provider

The campaign to get whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks disconnected from the wider web continues, with the site's DNS provider dropping its primary domain.

EveryDNS.net, the company that provides WikiLeaks with DNS hosting on its primary Wikileaks.org domain, disconnected the company early this morning claiming that it was the target of sustained attacks that were impacting the service as a whole - and forcing it to choose between keeping Wikileaks.org live or ensuring its service remained active for the rest of its customers.

In a statement, an EveryDNS.net official confirmed the disconnection: "EveryDNS.net provided domain name system (DNS) services to the wikileaks.org domain name until 10PM EST, December 2, 2010, when such services were terminated. The services were terminated for violation of the provision which states that [a] 'Member shall not interfere with another Member's use and enjoyment of the Service or another entity's use and enjoyment of similar services.'

"The interference at issues arises from the fact that wikileaks.org has become the target of multiple distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. These attacks have, and future attacks would, threaten the stability of the EveryDNS.net infrastructure, which enables access to almost 500,000 other websites."

Following the disconnection of the domain, which WikiLeaks confirmed on the group's official Twitter feed around five hours ago, the site was forced to switch to temporarily using a direct IP address - 88.80.13.160 - for users to access the site, which is currently under attack on several fronts following the release of thousands of confidential cables to and from US government departments and embassies.

Since that time, WikiLeaks has moved to using a new domain - Wikileaks.ch - which is hosted in Switzerland, a notoriously neutral country that the group hopes will prove to be out of the reach of both the political and underground attempts to silence the site.